Plan Bee: we can live without pesticides!

Today Greenpeace launched a solutions report, Plan Bee - living without pesticides. It illustrates concrete ways to protect our bees and agriculture and proves the large-scale feasibility of ecological farming. Only ecological farming is the solution for the global pollinators- and agriculture crisis.

In Europe, honey bees have declined by 25% between1985 and 2005, and this has led to a global "pollination crisis".

Our toxic industrial agriculture is mostly to blame because we know that pesticides and monoculture are increasing the destruction of natural habitats for bees, wild bees, and other pollinating insects.

Alright, so this is understood. But how do we get rid of pesticides?

Greenpeace has been exposing the causes of the bees' decline for months, but we also wanted to demonstrate that solutions exist and that there are other ways to produce food without harming them. In this report Greenpeace shows that ecological farming is the only way out of our industrial agricultural crisis. As it stands, farmers, scientists and eco-entrepreneurs are currently championing modern ecological agriculture all across Europe. These heroes are truly protecting bees on the long term.

This report reviews the scientific studies on ecological farming practices which allow farmers to prevent pests, without using pesticides. Research and existing ecological farming practices confirm that we don't need pesticides to produce healthy food.

We also wanted to show through concrete examples that ecological farming methods do exist and work. Through farmers' stories, scientists' inputs, research institutes and companies from several european countries, we've noticed that it is possible to get amazing outcomes using ecological farming techniques. These include areas like flower strips to increase biodiversity inside and around fields, crops rotation, all working with the forces of nature not against it.

We need to change our agricultural model! It is possible, and farmers across Europe are moving towards ecological farming. It is a profound change, but a necessary one to remove dead-end industrial agriculture with its widespread use of toxic chemicals.

Ecological farming is the solution to save the bees and to ensure healthy food for today and tomorrow. You can be part of this change. Act now and sign the petition on sos-bees.org

Matthias Wüthrich is an Ecological Farming campaigner and European bees project leader at Greenpeace Switzerland.

We can live without pesticides, we can live without Monsanto, we can live without meat, we can live without oil, we can live without a lot of things, but until people realizes that, most of the good things in this planet will be exhausted...

SAVE THE NIGER DELTA REGION.
Nigeria is a country that is blessed with abundant mineral and natural resources. The largest oil producer in Afric...

SAVE THE NIGER DELTA REGION.
Nigeria is a country that is blessed with abundant mineral and natural resources. The largest oil producer in Africa, yet more than 70% it her population lives in abject poverty. The bulk of Nigeria’s oil wealth is located in 250 fields in the Niger Delta region, but same region has been plagued by oil exploitation, oil spillage, increasing crisis, high crime rate etc. The government is not oblivious of this fact, but the manipulations of multinational oil companies have made them nonchalant about the increasing danger in the Niger Delta.
In 1998, a spillage that released over 400,000 barrels of crude oil was released into farmlands and rivers in Akwa Ibom state, destroying both land and water in a region where their major source of livelihood is farming and fishing. Continuous gas flaring and pollution in the area has led to acid rain in the area, leaving the indigenes of the area with several respiratory diseases caused by pollution.
How can a region that produces over 90% of the country’s oil gas reserve be facing such magnitude of poverty and exploitation because of negligence on the part of the government. However, I beckon on international partners, the greenpeace international and other international organisations to take a closer look at the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, perhaps something could still be done to savage the situation in the Niger Delta region.